Incorporating Rationality in Intelligent Agents

<p>An autonomous intelligent agent functions in interaction with its environment. The agent is capable of altering the state of its environment by acting on it. An essential requirement in any goal-oriented system is that these actions should be rational. In this thesis a design is presented for incorporating rationality into the architecture of the agent. The class of autonomous agents discussed maintain an internal model of their world in a revisable belief system (specifically a Justification-based reason Maintenance System, or JRMS). A theory of rational action is developed and represented symbolically as an independent control structure that filters candidate beliefs . The JRMS is extended to maintain information on the type of a belief, which is used by the control structure to ensure that the agent's actions are consistent with its theory of rational action.</p>